Welcome to Wonderland
by DontForgetWhereYouGotMe
Summary: Is there a secret history between Regina and the Mad Hatter?


It was quite a cloudy, dreary afternoon, and rain fell in droplets from the sky. I woke up to the sound of its pitter patter on the castle roof, and at once I sprang into life. Jumping from my soft goose down sheets, I loped towards the window to see what awaited me.

Outside, it was gray. The rain and clouds didn't seem as though they were going to leave any time soon.

I broke into a smile. It was the perfect day to go down to the river with Hatter.

I quickly slipped into a black day dress, combed my ebony curls, and stepped into my lithe black walking boots, and was down the ornate staircases and outside the palace doors within five minutes.

From there I took a special route outside the castle walls; exiting through the front entrance meant all sorts of verbal prodding and poking from the guards, a trial I was not in the temper for. Instead I planned to quietly slip through the side door near my mother's rose garden.

As I made my way towards the exit, I examined the roses. They were all painted, an artificial, bright red. I crinkled my nose in disgust; they were terribly ugly. I didn't understand why my mother fretted and fawned over her roses so much. They weren't even very beautiful. Apple trees, on the other hand, were a wonder to behold. Their stalks elegant individuals, neither bush nor tree. Their fruits red and perfectly formed, always there for those who needed them.

But as I neared the entrance to the woods, a flicker of difference caught my eye; a single white rose, lying among the black leaves and thorns, pure, untouched, forgotten by the palace groundskeepers. Without realizing it, i gravitated towards the rose and reached out to touch one of its delicate pedals. It was white.

White as snow.

Slowly, I wrapped my thumb and forefinger around the flower's neck and gently plucked it from its bush. I would give it to Hatter, and he, knowing of the awful red roses in my mother's garden, would appreciate it without explanation. That was where we found our common ground, Hatter and I; we both were attracted to what was - _different_.

I slipped through the exit to the grounds and inhaled wet, wooden forest air. On these days, the trees were blackened with wetness, and the world took on a deceivingly simplistic black-to-white spectrum. It was beautiful.

The river was running high today; it grazed and caressed the dark gray rock on which Hatter and I often sat, talking and watching the river.

I reached out my foot to take a single step forward towards the rock, and as soon as I stepped, a white, dramatic face popped out at me from completely nowhere. I yelped and took a step back.

Then I quickly overcame my reflexes and realized it was Hatter, dangling upside-down from the low-hanging branch of a tree. I burst out laughing.

"You're mad!" I said through my bouts of laughter.

"That's what they call me!" He said as he let go of the branch and flipped to land on his feet. We fell into step beside each other and both mounted the rock. He climbed it first, then held out a hand to me. I took his hand in my left, and held up my petticoats with my right.

The feeling of the smooth rose pedals in my hand contrasted with the rougher texture of my petticoats and reminded me of the rose's existence. "Here," I held it out to him.

He took it, examined it, twirled it in his pale fingers. "The white rose gardens used to be so beautiful. When the king was in power, all the gardens remained white. But soon after his death, the queen instructed all the white roses to be removed from the palace and be replaced with red ones. The groundskeepers couldn't find roses anywhere that were the correct shade of red. So they painted the white roses. The queen was furious when she found out, and had those responsible for the painting beheaded. But, even after leading her own private search party, the queen couldn't find any red roses either. So she demanded that the tradition of painting the roses continue, and to this day it has." Hatter continued to twirl the rose between his fingers. I moved my gaze from the rose to his eyes, and was struck by how pensive – how _knowing_ – they looked. But Hatter was like that. He knew secrets that where whispered only in the darkest corners of the earth, secrets that made perfect sense but could not be made sense of by anyone outside the realm of the insane.

He was only five when the roses turned red, and I a mere infant. But he told the story as though he had seen it unfold with a sharp, unforgiving clarity that was well beyond the realm of a child.

"Hatter?" I asked tentatively, wondering if that would be enough to break him from his reverie. It wasn't. He was lost in the land of the mad. I longed in these times to know what he was thinking. "James…" I tentatively lifted my finger to his cold, chiseled cheekbone. My use of his true name, a name that was only whispered in those dark corners where his mind resided, caused him to respond. He closed his eyes and allowed me to trace down his cheek. I let my hand linger by his face for a second before it fell limply to my side.

There was a moment of silence before he opened his eyes, and I saw the playful glint in them from earlier when he hung from the tree.

"I'd say it's a fine day for a ride, don't you?" He asked. I smiled. This was another thing we had in common. Ever since he'd become our palace stable boy, I knew he felt just as passionate about riding as I did. He groomed the horses with care and kept the stalls clean for the horses' own comfort and hygiene, unlike previous stable boys who simply cleaned enough so that they wouldn't get sacked, but no more.

"I'd say it's a fine day for a _race_," I replied playfully. I lifted my petticoats and ran as fast as I could across the forest floor, my flexible shoes and knowledge of the forest allowing me great speed and agility. But although I had these advantages, Hatter was incredibly nimble, and I knew he would be close behind.

Sure enough, he made it past me despite my head start, and popped up unexpectedly right in my way. I didn't have time to keep myself from crashing into him, but he caught me, and we collapsed upon each other, laughing.

When our laughter died down and we regained our composure, Hatter said, "you know, you really should do better to watch where your going." I shoved him with my shoulder and a smile crept up the corner of my mouth. We resumed walking side by side until we reached the stables.


End file.
